


Brighter Than Gold

by grainjew



Series: stared at the sun and the sun smiled back and called itself pirate king (or: loyalty, on the high seas) [7]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Loyalty, Whole Cake Island Arc, manga (chapter 903) spoilers but only in the bonus chapter, namis favorite coping mechanism: be pissed, there needs to be more nami loyalty content in the world shes so excellent i love her, whole cake was very stressful so nami is very pissed, you know im never sure how much swearing qualifies for teen vs gen rating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-10 23:10:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15302100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grainjew/pseuds/grainjew
Summary: Exhausted and pinned to a wall in Charlotte Linlin's book prison, Nami decides it's past time to talk to Luffy.Seas,she was tired. Fuck Sanji and his stupid emotions that hit much too close to home for Nami's comfort, fuck Luffy's determination to bleed for them all and take down anything in his way, fuck the circumstances that led to them invading an Emperor’s territory without even the promise of treasure to show for it. And fuck the sticky mizuame that made any movement gross and most of all fuck thepinthrough herhands.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallingwish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingwish/gifts).



"Luffy," said Nami, her worried irritation a ray of familiarity, "you're an idiot."

Her hands hurt, and she was crabby and exhausted and covered in mizuame. If they were going to stick a _pin_ through her _hands_ at the very least they could let her shower, but _noo_.

This whole excursion was a disaster, and she wasn't feeling very charitable towards Sanji for sending them on it either, right now. And Luffy had just picked _another_ fight with Big Mom, because of course he had. They were both running on empty after an entire night of non-stop battle and that was _before_ Sanji showed up and beat the crap out of her captain because he (Sanji) was being an idiot. You'd think he would know better by now, but _nooo_. She’d long-since given up on _Luffy_ knowing better but it sure would be nice if he could declare war at _slightly_ more opportune times.

"Whaat?" said Luffy, and she just barely stopped the impulse to tear her hands apart in an attempt at banging her forehead against the wall.

Instead, she gave him her best "no duh?" face and explained what really should have been obvious. "You can't just go picking fights with Emperors when we are _literally in their prisons_. You are not in the state to be fighting _Buggy the Clown_ right now, dumbass."

"She was pissing me off," said Luffy, like that was a valid excuse, and the worst thing was that with him it basically was.

“That still doesn’t make it a good idea!”

“Ehh,” said Luffy, and Nami knew that if he wasn’t also _pinned to the fucking wall_ he would be waving a hand dismissively. “It’ll be fine! I was gonna kick her ass anyways so I may as well start now!”

And like, Nami _knew that_ , she knew that as well as the rest of them no matter how loathe she was to admit it. Luffy would be Pirate King, which meant defeating the Four Emperors, so Luffy would defeat the Four Emperors. Nami knew that, but it didn't make the prospect of facing off against Big Mom any less terrifying. Or make Luffy's timing any less terrible.

She sighed, deeply, almost slumped before she remembered the _pin through her hands_. Which, by the way, hurt. A _lot_. And would hurt more if she slumped and put weight on it.

 _Seas_ , she was tired. Fuck Sanji and his stupid emotions that hit much too close to home for Nami's comfort, fuck Luffy's determination to bleed for them all and take down anything in his way, fuck the circumstances that led to them invading an Emperor’s territory without even the promise of treasure to show for it. And fuck the sticky mizuame that made any movement gross and most of all fuck the _pin_ through her _hands_.

This sucked. What was she doing here, of her own free will?

Right, following Straw Hat Luffy to rescue their absolute _disaster_ of a cook.

She took a deep breath and said, following some sudden impulse she could not quite source, beyond inhibitions, beyond tiredness, “Luffy.” There was an intensity to her voice that scared her. "You're my captain."

She ignored his questioning look, almost a mirror of her own "no duh?" face. "I guess I never actually said that, did I?" she continued, laughing lightly and maybe a little hysterically. "I should have, I really should have, but I guess I forgot." She _wished_ she could _move her hands_. "Or I was still doing what," she looked away, trying to shake a strand of hair out of her face, "Usopp did, back then. Thinking of you so much as a friend I forget you're also my captain."

She turned her head and met his eyes again and nearly flinched back, because it had been so long since she'd been on the receiving end of his gaze that she had _forgotten_. His face was blank, discerning, his eyes narrowed just slightly, and everything else that had led up to this moment stopped mattering because suddenly the fate of the world rested on Nami's words and Luffy's judgement.

“I figured some stuff out, when Kuma… sent us away. And maybe this really, really isn't the best time to be having this sort of talk but I got so tired all my filters fell off earlier, and talking is a great way to think about things that aren't, well,” she gestured to the general situation with her head, because her hands were _pinned to the wall_. “So. I guess I'm telling you this stuff now.”

Nami was possessive, and Luffy was possessive. She had long-since come to terms with her own possessiveness, had never really considered it a flaw, but Arlong had been possessive too. And Luffy, who was so, so different than Arlong, had not been someone she wanted to associate with either captaincy or possessiveness, and especially not the two together. Arlong had hurt her and Luffy had saved her, and Arlong had tainted the concepts of addressing someone as Captain, of being _someone’s navigator_ , so of _course_ she didn't want to put that on Luffy.

But with Luffy, she was free to do as she pleased — to leave as she pleased, even, like Vivi, not that she ever would — and she knew that all the faith she put in him would be returned tenfold in steadfast support, and love, and protection.

“If I'm _your_ navigator, then it is by my own will that you're _my_ captain,” declared Nami, meeting Luffy stare to stare and baring her soul to him. Oh, she belonged to him, the best kind of belonging, safe and defended and depended on, but recursively he belonged to her, too. And since that was the way of things, since he was hers as much as she was his, she was more than willing now to call him Captain, and hear him answer Navigator in kind.

He blinked very slowly, face unchanging, and then threw back his head so that the meager light of the library-prison lit his eyes and his teeth like molten fire as he laughed. “Of course!” he said, and the conviction in his voice was still the same as it had been at Arlong Park, at Orange Town even, him deciding she was crew before she even knew the shape of his ambition. “There’s no other navigator but Nami in the whole world who belongs on my ship.”

He was speaking in that way that stilled the seas and turned the world on its axis and made his decisions the same kind of fact as gravity and the tides, that way that left them all breathless and wrapped in unflinching certainty that Monkey D Luffy would be Pirate King and they would be there to see it.

Nami leaned into his words, bathing in his surety and sinking into his faith. She didn't trust much, but she trusted in Luffy, and she trusted Luffy's trust in her, and that was more than enough to keep her afloat.

“Nobody else is as good as me,” she snorted, halfway between embarrassingly emotional and wryly humorous. She flicked him a grin. “Only the best for the Pirate King!”

He grinned at her, brighter than any gold, wider than any sea, and it was so hard to worry about the future with that smile pointed at her and then at Raftel, more certain in its course than even a Poneglyph or an Eternal Pose could be. And she, smiling back, riding the tails of his conviction and pointing the way. She gloried in it, the freedom Luffy gathered to him, inevitable as waves sweeping to the shore and free for the taking.

And then she tried to move her arm and reality came rushing back with all the dull, unceremonious pain of a pounding headache.

Fucking pin. Fucking mizuame. Fucking Big Mom. Fucking Luffy. Fucking book-prison.

Fucking _Sanji_.

As soon as they escaped, Nami was going to shower, and then she was going to electrocute someone, and there was really nothing anyone could do about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i might add a second chapter at some point to this of all the nami introspection ficlets ive written that got pulled into this piece because i have a LOT of those and they're not long enough to post by my normal standards but they're very good imo
> 
> this is kind of a pair to "that certain calmness," my sanji whole cake loyalty fic, but mostly in that sanji and nami get _wildly_ different things out of following luffy and i think thats fascinating
> 
>  
> 
> hmu on tumblr or twitter @grainjew !!! i love to talk!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> heres the promised introspection ficlets!! nami is good i love her

 

**Clown Ballet**

 

Nami had come to terms a long time ago with the fact that she would never understand what went on in Luffy's head. Honestly, she wasn't sure even Zoro always did, for all that he was a similar bullheaded idiot and tended to do as Luffy said whether or not he had a why.

Nami, a sensible person, considered consequences and reasonable obstacles when faced with a problem. Luffy didn't seem to have that ability: instead, he barrelled directly through to whatever outcome he saw. Probably didn't even know the meaning of doubt. Sometimes, if she thought hard enough (too often) or he bothered to explain (not nearly often enough), his thought processes could be reverse-engineered to make some sort of Nami-approved logic. Other times it was as though he had teleported to an entirely different mental island while charging through to his answer.

Sometimes, he cut (punched) through to the heart of a problem and offered the solution they had all been tiptoeing around or the exact words of comfort and assurance they had so desperately needed to hear. Sometimes, he was just an idiot. (Meat would not, in fact, spontaneously appear just because he was hungry.) Sometimes (always), he didn't care either way and bluntly stated his truths to anyone who would listen and everyone who wouldn't. (Firmly. By smashing a fist into their face.)

More often than not, it was as though he expected the universe itself to bend to his will and submit to his vision of how it ought to be.

Honestly, it probably would. Nami would bet that if he really tried, he could use the King's Haki to force the sea itself to its knees.

Luffy got his way, and Nami followed him, even if she didn't understand him one bit and would never obey him unquestioningly like Zoro. _Someone_ needed to be the voice of reason here, and Nami thought the most like a normal person except maybe Usopp (who was way too easily swayed) and Robin (who thought this was all hilarious and was therefore no help at all) so it had to be her.

She couldn't wrap her mind around how he thought, but it was fine, because he probably couldn't quite figure her out either. And in the end, what were the Straw Hat pirates than a mismatched family, and their captain even stranger than all of them? If she knew anything about this crew, it was that it took all kinds to sail the Thousand Sunny.

 

 

**Invisible Bench**

 

Nami's first impression of him is that he is an idiot, and hardly worthy of the captaincy of his little dinghy and crew of two if he can't even tell north from south, and it is a first impression that stays with her. Even as she grows to love him as a friend and then a brother, and then something meshed together in a whirlwind of affection and disbelief and gratitude, he is most of all an idiot. Her friend, and monstrously strong, and hellishly determined, but still an idiot. Devotional, unquestioning loyalty is for Zoro, and then later for Brooke, who is polite to everyone anyways. Nami is here to pound some sense into the idiot when he does something stupid. Which is most of the time. Always.

(She still cannot think the word _captain_ without hearing Arlong's laugh, and Luffy is the opposite of all that, so she doesn't think it. The word itself is tainted by association, and Arlong doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Luffy-who-saved-her. So Luffy is her friend, who she shares a ship with and hits on the head when he does something dumb.)

Nami gives the orders, anyways, when they hit a storm or a whirlpool or some freak Grand Line weather phenomenon, and the Log Pose decides their course. Sure, they all accede to his wishes when he's being stubborn, but at that point he's more force of nature than human anyways. There's no arguing with an idiot who has decided he wants to go to the sky.

(Usopp walking out shakes her to her core, and Zoro's ultimatum about letting him back only if he begs shakes her even more. She can't imagine just _leaving_ like that, and yet, and yet she did, once. She knows how much the loneliness must hurt Usopp, and she wishes they would just let him back, but. _This isn't some childish pirate game._ Is she— Luffy is her friend. He is an idiot, and she loves him, and that's the end of it.)

Things settle back to normal, and Luffy is still an idiot, and has added yet another idiot to the ship's lineup in an amazing feat of persuasive powers that involved waving a speedo in the air. Idiot. Nami is fond, and despairs, because apparently Robin getting more comfortable with their little family of dumbasses and Nami means thinking the idiots are hilarious and not being helpful at all. Brooke swears formal loyalty, and Nami is honestly vaguely bewildered, because it's _Luffy_.

(Luffy gives the order to _run_ and in between panic and grief and all-encompassing terror Nami thinks, _oh_. Oh, oh, _oh_ , this is why he is the captain, because he does everything he can to keep the crew safe in the worst situations, because he has always saved them. He charges bullheaded into the Grand Line with a crew of five, but he stops and waits for them to catch up as he clears the path. She calls out to him, and sees the heartbreak on his face. If she can befriend Hachi after everything, why should she not be able to call Luffy-who-saved-her captain? He gives them an order: two years, be prepared. She remembers the heartbreak on his face at losing them, and obeys.)

Nami's first impression of him after two years is that she _missed_ him, and he is whole, and he is more than worthy of the best she can give him, as his navigator. He is her friend, and her idiot brother, and he is her captain-- and she intends to do right by him, from now until forever.

 

 

**This Is a Test of the Clown Emergency System**

 

Nami had never been terrified of Luffy.

She had been terrified because of him, and for him, and by the consequences of his actions, but she had not been terrified _of_ him, because even in the beginning when she hadn't quite figured out how to accept his unconditional care, when she hadn't quite figured out that he could do anything, _she_ could do anything, that she _would_ do anything to stay on his ship and keep him safe, he had been her captain, and she had been _his_. So though bounties and seas and rising infamy and declarations of war, through separation and reunion and standing just the few of them against the whole of the world, she was terrified of a lot of things, but not of Luffy, who still handed her his hat sometimes with the utmost trust in his eyes.

She trusted back, knew from the depths of her, the most primal and unfettered part of her soul, that Luffy would someday (soon, soon, soon) rule the same seas she mapped. The Pirate King, and they his crew, full and safe and loved and the only people in the whole world that mattered quite like they did.

Little Nami from Cocoyashi in East Blue who dreamed so wide of mapping the world could never have pictured any of this; Nami of the Arlong Pirates, her sight narrowed to the glint of gold coins and the twist of Arlong's temper, could have seen it even less.

And Cat Burglar Nami of the Straw Hat Pirates, reading the newspaper article on their invasion of Totto Land, was suddenly those girls again, disbelieving and breathless.

It was one thing to know, objectively, that she and Luffy had defeated a Sweet Commander, and they had all somehow escaped an Emperor, and Luffy had defeated another Sweet Commander, the deadliest of them. It was one thing to know that Luffy would, in the future, be King of the Pirates. It was something _entirely_ foreign to see a 1 500 000 000 beri bounty on her captain's head, to see the newspaper calling him Fifth Emperor all triumphantly, spreading its arms and declaring him one of the Three Great Powers, more a force of nature than a person. Pirate King was a sure goal, set and certain like a lodestone in her chest. And yet somehow she had never quite thought of Luffy as an Emperor of the Sea.

She brushed a hand against the smooth boards of Sunny's upper deck, suppressed a small burst of near-hysterical laughter. _The Fifth Emperor._ This ship belonged to an Emperor! Her captain had a 1 500 000 000 beri bounty. _She_ was the navigator of an _Emperor_.

_The Fifth Emperor!_

They were all going to die.

Nami had never been terrified of Luffy, but she was shivering anyways, and awe was almost close enough to terror to count. She could almost _see_ Raftel looming in the distance, the island of dreams she was trusted to guide them to.

Luffy was an Emperor now, and Nami, little Nami from a village so irrelevant the Marines didn't even bother saving it, was an Emperor's navigator. And Pirate King was so, so close.

 

 

**Bonus: the nami honor guard scene we all deserve**

 

Nami had followed Luffy onto the Marine ship because... well, at this point, she wasn't sure. She'd had the vain hope of getting treasure out of the deal, because that vice admiral in charge looked pretty ornate, and then Luffy's Rocket had happened too fast for her to really think of consequences. So, now she was stuck on this battleship with Luffy and a newly un-hostaged Chopper, being surrounded by Marines. Goddamnit.

"Ah, there you are," said Luffy, his voice low and dangerous in that way that would always sent her shivering no matter that it had never and would never be directed at her. A faint haze of Conqueror's Haki wafted off him, nothing she couldn't handle. She wasn't sure he even knew he was letting it out.

Luffy advanced slowly towards the vice admiral, step by step with that sense of dramatics Nami would always appreciate. She saw some of the Marines surrounding them all quail. No point in pitying them, they took Chopper, what did they _think_ they were getting themselves into?

Then she saw them take heart in their numbers and make to rush her captain to stop him getting to their superior. Nevermind no pity; her pity was negative now. A few swings of the clima-tact had them looking up in alarm as the sky above their heads darkened with thunderclouds. Good.

"Beware of freak lightning storms. _Thunderbolt tempo_!" Nami smiled, the vicious kind she had perfected as a thief, and rained lightning down on the Marines like a vengeful deity. "Don't get in my captain's way," she added, watching the lot of them writhe on the wooden deck of the ship. "You're not worth his attention." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before you ask, yes, i _am_ actually obligated to name all my introspection ficlets after the clown acts we teach the kids at circus summer camp. its very important. 
> 
> reminder that you can and should come talk to me on tumblr or twitter @grainjew !!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Close your eyes and wish for sunlight (open them and see the stars guiding you)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16134920) by [Amazaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amazaria/pseuds/Amazaria)




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